And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

Book 5 of my 2017 Reading Challenge
read on January 12

And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman

Summary (via the book jacket)
Isn't that the best of all life's ages, an old man thinks as he looks at his grandchild. When a boy is just big enough to know how the world works but still young enough to refuse to accept it.
Grandpa and Noah are sitting on a bench in a square that keeps getting smaller every day. The square is strange but also familiar, full of the sweet scent of the hyacinths that Grandma loved to grow in her garden.
As they wait together, they tell jokes and discuss their shared love of mathematics. Grandpa recalls what it was like to fall in love with his wife - and what it was like to lose her. She's as real to him now as the first day he met her, but he dreads the day when he won't remember her.
This peculiar space that is growing dimmer and more confusing all the time is where they will learn to say good-bye, the scent of hyacinths in the air, nothing to fear.
Fredrik Backman has rendered an exquisitely moving portrait of an elderly man's struggle to hold onto his most precious memories and his family's efforts to care for him even as they must find a way to let go.

My Opinion
I didn't want to read this novella in one sitting because I wanted to savor it but the pages kept turning and I couldn't help it.
Lovely little book with a beautiful ending.

A Few Quotes from the Book
"Humans are a strange breed in the way our fear of getting old seems to be even greater than our fear of dying."

"That's why we get the chance to spoil our grandchildren, because by doing that we're apologizing to our children."